Tag Archive | "conservatorship"

Washington, DC – Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco today sent to Congress a strategic plan for the next phase of the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises). The plan builds on the Acting Director’s February 2010 letter to Congress on the conservatorships and sets forth objectives and steps FHFA is taking or will take to meet FHFA’s obligations as conservator. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into conservatorships Sept. 6, 2008 and have since received more than $180 billion in taxpayer support.

FHFA identifies three strategic goals for the next phase of the conservatorships:

Build. Build a new infrastructure for the secondary mortgage market;

Contract. Gradually contract the Enterprises’ dominant presence in the marketplacewhile simplifying and shrinking their operations; and

“With the conservatorships operating for more than three years and no near-term resolution insight, it is time to update and extend the goals and directions of the conservatorships,” DeMarco wrote. “FHFA is contemplating next steps to build an infrastructure for thesecondary mortgage market that is consistent with existing policy proposals and will supportany outcome of the leading legislative proposals. FHFA looks forward to working withCongress and the Administration on a resolution of the conservatorships and a comprehensivereview of the nation’s housing finance system,” said DeMarco.

Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives — at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.

Business Week-

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding.

Testimony of Michael J. Williams
President and Chief Executive Officer
Fannie Mae
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
“Analysis of the Post-Conservatorship Legal Expenses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac”
February 15, 2011